TransAtlantic

This is a wonderful book. It's not the masterpiece that McCann's last book (Let the Great World Spin) is, but still it is impressive. At first glance it appears to be disparate threads: Alcock & Brown make history with a transatlantic flight in 1919; Frederick Douglass also makes history when he visits Ireland in 1845; and George Mitchell negotiates a peace settlement in 1998. It's only toward the end of the third section that we get a glimpse of how the pieces fit together, and that's about a third of the way into the book.

Highly recommended.

I've only read a few authors who are able to do what McCann does, only a few writers who can create a novel that's like an amazing mix of a crossword puzzle and a jigsaw puzzle and a symphony. That's what McCann does here. He chooses beautiful words and intriguing story lines and powerful themes and whips these together. It's like magic.

“We seldom know what echo our actions will find, but our stories will most certainly outlast us.” [b:TransAtlantic 16085517 TransAtlantic Colum McCann https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1367929787s/16085517.jpg 21887216] is the Butterfly Effect at its finest. Not only is this a story about how America's history connects to Ireland's, it is also a tale about how generations from the past can still have an effect on us today. Though not as moving as [b:Let the Great World Spin 5941033 Let the Great World Spin Colum McCann https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1320561164s/5941033.jpg 6113503], McCann's beautiful prose and evidence of painstaking research is there.  Told through the POV of four women over several generations, the book describes the hardships they and their families overcame to make their mark in history. Hannah puts it best as she reflects on her life and thinks to herself, “The world does not turn without moments of grace.”